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Develop Practice Questions to Prepare for the PMI-ACP® Exam

One of the best study tools you can use for passing the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® Exam is to take multiple practice exams using an exam simulator. As you are preparing for the PMI-ACP® Exam you are in fact preparing to take a 120-question multiple choice 3-hour exam. And just as if you were an Olympic Athlete, taking this exam becomes your specific athletic competition, and you have to continuously train for it in order to be successful. An effective way of "training" for your PMI-ACP Exam is to develop your own practice questions in addition to answering other practice questions.

Develop Practice Questions about Unfamiliar Concepts

You may be wondering how in the world you can make up sample questions about a concept you don’t feel you know enough about. Well, that’s the whole point! In order to ask a question, you must know something about the concept, and so you must study it. For example, if you’re not sure about the elements involved in servant leadership and want to develop some practice questions about it, you’re going to have to study it carefully. By studying and forming practice questions in your mind and on paper, you’ll begin to understand agile concepts from a different point of view and more effectively retain what you learn.

Develop Practice Questions in Your Weakest Knowledge Areas

Developing practice questions yourself will also help you address your weak spots. Once you have determined those areas of the agile knowledge base where you are weakest, you should begin to focus on the concepts that are confusing you and thoroughly read all materials relating to it. Which agile concepts are giving you the most trouble? Are you also having difficulty applying these concepts in your work? It helps to discuss this with other PMI-ACP aspirants or a study partner. As you study the concept, you should write down particularly troublesome areas and think of ideas for practice questions as you’re reading. Jot those down and go over them the next day to see if you can answer them. You may be surprised at how much you’ve retained by applying your reading in the form of questions.

Develop Practice Questions for Application in Real-Life Scenarios

When you run across agile concepts that are difficult to grasp, try developing scenario-based questions by imagining that the scenario is actually taking place on one of your real-life agile projects. By doing this, your mind is wrapping itself around the concept and internalizing the information, which will actually help you apply it in the workplace. By practicing this kind of in-depth thinking about the specific agile concept, you’re learning much more than you would just reading about them. This can be the most effective method of studying for your PMI-ACP exam, particularly in the areas in which you’re deficient.

Share Your Questions with Other PMI-ACP Aspirants

When you think of questions and are then able to correctly answer them, try posing them to others. Toss them out to one of the online forums for prospective PMI-ACP aspirants and review their feedback. As you obtain the opinions of others on your practice questions, you can gauge whether you’re being too easy on yourself in terms of question difficulty. It’s important to know this now, because the real exam will have no such consideration. By framing questions as you study and bouncing them off other exam takers, you will be examining all the details of the concept that may have escaped you before. You’ll find yourself understanding more and being better able to analyze the specific concepts.

Once you’ve formulated your practice questions, answered them to your satisfaction and had them critiqued by others, you’ll be able to develop additional practice questions that will be much more challenging. Learning which questions to ask is sometimes just as important as the answers you provide. In addition, most training experts agree that the best way to learn something is to teach it. By developing your own PMI-ACP Exam practice questions, you are in essence teaching yourself and affording yourself the capability of truly understanding the difficult agile concepts you need to master in order to ensure your PMI-ACP Exam success.